KraalD 2020. COVID – 19 Disease. Victorian plum tree, with the fungal disease stands in the midst of my garden without the cure. Infectious, mutilated branches are transposed and wrapped in rainbow colour plastic self-disposal. Plasticised, the virus is preserved in the dormant tree trunk for a thousand human years. Rochester, Kent cite-specific art installation #mygarden #worksinprogress #Designedisposal #Designtransposal #PlasticPlasticise

Here I am taking a refuge in Braidotti’s bio-centred egalitarianism, that challenges the prevailing standard of post-anthropocentric agenda and the assertion of advanced technologies that mean ‘man is the measure of all things’. The ‘bio-centred egalitarianism is a philosophy of affirmative becoming, which activates a nomadic subject into sustainable processes of transformation’ (Braidotti, 2006, p. 110). For the sake of clarity, I interpret Braidotti’s bio-centred egalitarianism as the way to define the eco-feminist environmental justice, a she-fox wake-up call for the planetary and equality rights for all life. I resonate well with the profound acknowledgement that ‘life’ is a slippery concept, especially animal life. Multispecies relations and interactions are central and placed along the ‘materialist lines of becoming as deep transformations of self and society’ (Braidotti, 2006, p. 109).

From pagan god Pan to panic from transposons pandemic: Greek word panikos, meaning sudden fear, combined with a pandemic which is a disease epidemic that has spread across a vast region, for instance, multiple continents. Pan, the pagan god, is among the dancing spirits in Dionysus’ entourage. Pan is the god of the wild, shepherds, flocks, nature of mountain wilds, father of Fauna. His energy is bawdy, lustful and mischievous. For clarity Fauna meaning the animal of the geological period, for example, I/We live in the human-made geological time of the Anthropocene. So I count my body as an animal representative to put it a complex bacterial, fungal and bio cell meta cluster of myself.

On another unwashed hand, a virus or transposons, also known as jumping genes, can represent a small parasite that cannot reproduce by itself. Once it infects a susceptible cell, however, a virus can direct the cell machinery to produce more viruses, like SARS-CoV-2 aka COVID-19 and his cousins SARS and MERS. Back to the word ‘panic’ which stems from Pan’s name and why I/We have the collective feeling of losing control because the ecstasy generated by his energetic presence can be too much to assimilate. Thus, in hope, I am fearless. Wish you all good health.

#StayAtHome #day9of quarantine

KraalD, 2019, Practice-based Projects Overview Diagram 2014-2019, (on the left) Green design engagements; (on the right and top) Blue design series, DIWO and DIY mode.

Edited by Kate Fletcher, Louise St. Pierre, Mathilda Tham

Proud to make the contribution, See SECTION III: Standing: Standing to achieve a view: Living Landfill Katarina Dimitrijevic https://routledge.com/Design-and-Nature-A-Partnership/Fletcher-Pierre-Tham/p/book/9780815362746… via @routledgebooks

Organised as a dialogue between nature and design, this book explores design ideas, opportunities, visions and practices through relating and uncovering experience of the natural world.

Presented as an edited collection of 25 wide-ranging short chapters, the book explores the possibility of new relations between design and nature, beyond human mastery and understandings of nature as resource and by calling into question the longstanding role for design as agent of capitalism. The book puts forward ways in which design can form partnerships with living species and examines designers’ capacities for direct experience, awe, integrated relationships and new ways of knowing. It covers:

• New design ethics of care

• Indigenous perspectives

• Prototyping with nature

• Methods for new design and nature relations

• A history of design and nature

• Animist beliefs

• De-centering human-centered design

• Understanding nature has power and agency

Design and Nature: A Partnership is a rich resource for designers who wish to learn to engage with sustainability from the ground up.

19th September to 22 September 2019

Old Truman Brewery, 24 Hanbury Street, London, E1 6DR

Open invite to London Design Festival, KraalD is super excited to be selected by the curatorial board and play the part of the DR4C Showcase 2019 narrative that is a vehicle of change in design professions.

Design Research for Change 2019 is a showcase of over 60 design-led projects that traverse disciplinary, methodological, geographical, and conceptual boundaries. The projects illustrate wide-ranging social, cultural, and economic impact and highlight the significant roles that UK-based Design researchers play in some of the most complex and challenging issues we face both in the UK and globally and the positive outcomes that are being designed and developed. 

KraalD Sea PET Jellyfish Mobile workshop starts from 15:00 h to 17:00 h on the 7^th August 2019 @ RAW Labs London. Workshop length is two hours free to attend workshop open to ages 4 to 12 years and up and it is designed for the easy peas craft skill levels. The interactive workshop event is part of the Tall Tales of the Kitchen Kelpies Soup group exhibition that is open from 30 th August and closing on 8^th September 2019.

Join in your hands in making with plastics Sea PET Jellyfish Mobiles from the reused single-use plastics; fruit mesh, bottle tops, and bottle rings and colourful cable ties with Katarina from KraalD and guest artist T.J. Thorn. Let us make lush plastic voices in this oceanic underwater world affair together! This workshop is helping raise those silent plastic pollution voices heard in a joyful making manner.

In order to have all alphabetical ingredients for the oceanic soup for jellyfish bloom to thrive, bring along a smile and small plastic toys to weave into the making story.

Plastic pollution is hard to understand and super wicked to reverse and thus requires new ways of engaging with plastics materiality. In this design and art activist workshop, we visually co-create and in hands on making evoke and share some of my thoughtful explorations that are offering a more than human perspective on the oceanic plastic pollution.

I also invite the participatory stakeholders and audience to visualise the ocean in novel ways – as the living landfill. In the Sea PET (polyethylene terephthalate) plastic series, I am gazing in, beyond technocratic and technological solutions addressing plastics waste management, encouraging to envision plastics entanglement in oceans, while engaged in material tactics of single-use plastics reuse.

“I” trash, therefore “we” are.

https://kraald.org/